4/25 Applied forest history
David R. Foster, “Conservation lessons and challenges from ecological history,” Forest History Today
Foster, D. R., F. Swanson, J. D. Aber, I. Burke, N. Brokaw, D. Tilman, and A. Knapp. 2003. The Importance of Land-Use Legacies to Ecology and Conservation. BioScience 53: 77-88.
BLOG Due 11:30: QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER: For your blogs, you may consider the following: what do you think the most important lessons of history are for environmental policy? Specifically, how might an understanding of forest history change a Wisconsin forest planner's decision making?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Foster 2000 I was surprised to find how little history is actually used in current forest ecological studies. As a forestry student it made me realize how little emphasis is put on past land use, but rather collecting raw data to study solely natural processes in an forested ecosystem. Of course oftentimes there is a vague knowledge-base of past cultural influences to the landscape (ex: fire frequency occurrence in the oak-savanna ecotype of southern Wisconsin), but rarely is there extensive interpretation of this history as a means to assess and moreover predict future responses.
ReplyDeleteWith New England and the Harvard Forest as a sample site, Foster was able to see the connections of past land use influencing the changing landscape processes, including the rapid maturation of forests that has created an extensive carbon-sink across much of New England. One of the most important points Foster addresses is how dynamic these processes truly are and moreover how environmental policy needs to be equally adaptable, with a minimization of the “land-use legacy” perception. Foster summarizes this well by stating, “Although the inclination of many conservation organizations is to attempt to maintain or restore these habitats, a failure to recognize their true cultural origins, or distaste for attempting to replicate former practices, may lead to historically inaccurate or ineffective management prescriptions.” (8) What does this recognition of human influence mean for land and natural resource managers? In general this approach calls for an adaptive management strategy in resource use and planning, one that is targeted towards finding the “best” and most sustainable system long-term.
Working at the Arboretum the last four years I’ve noticed a similar approach that ecologists and field staff are taking there. Prescribed burns, for example, critical to managing invasive species and promoting native plant diversity is becoming less frequent than in the past due to limited staff, unfavorable seasonal weather, and non-optimal wind directions and patterns, particularly near the beltline. Additionally, given the possibility of an increasingly warmer and drier Wisconsin due to climate change, low relative humidity days, fewer air-quality appropriate days, and more combustible fuel loads, prescribed burning may be a dangerous endeavor in future prescriptions. Beyond climate change, other threats the Arb is facing include habitat fragmentation, urbanization, and hydrological modifications. With so many variables affecting the final outcome in many ways adaptive management is the only strategy that can be used here. Similar direct and indirect influences of past land use history persist throughout Wisconsin, calling for the public and policy-makers at large to shift away from an “original landscape” mentality and move towards allowing site-specific ecological variations.
-Jo
These two articles raised a lot of questions for me, as did Jo’s previous post. I understand that these articles address the importance of understanding a forest’s history before addressing the forest’s problems. However, I get confused when I think about what should be the goal for ecologists. Especially when climate change is being considered. And in reading Jo’s post, I don’t quite understand the goals of the Arboretum. What does Jo mean by “adaptive management”?
ReplyDeleteAs an outsider to the study of ecology, I am confused about what I should be doing and advocating for. As an artist, I tend to have poetic responses to landscapes, which I worry oversimplifies them. When I read about the Maya temple complexes being disguised by new tree cover, or a stone wall running through a forest in New England, I tend to think about the strength of nature and I admire its ability to take back land. However, it is so much more complicated than that. The effects of extensive agriculture can sicken a landscape for centuries. Just because there are trees, does not make the landscape strong and healthy.
In the articles, Foster et al, write about processes in the forest that are not natural but reactionary to earlier cultural modifications to the land. I wonder why are the processes not natural. For example, if the Maya “forest reserves have a deceivingly natural appearance,” (78) then are they actually unnatural? In the articles the authors seem to equate natural with healthy.
It is interesting to compare these articles to the very first book we read, Eaarth. McKibbon argued that our world is already changed, we need to adapt to living on this new planet, and that the rules of managing the old planet no longer apply. But in these articles, the authors make clear that understanding the history of an ecosystem is important to making it or keeping it healthy. In these articles we aren’t living on a new Earth at all, but in each landscape we can identify layers of interacting histories.
Throughout the semester we have explored a variety of forest histories from around the world. It is clear that these histories are absolutely valuable in determining the management strategies of current forested landscapes. In the US we have depended on historical data and observations of forest changes to determine forest policies and attempts to create sustainable forestry practices and support the idea of being stewards of the land. This is key, but problems arise when history does not have all the answers and when cultural and economic considerations question policies based on science and history. When I say, “when history does not have all the answers,” I’m referring to the dynamic state of ecosystems, to which Jo has also referred. We cannot always predict what an outcome of a current management practice will be based on history when ecosystems are experiencing different components such as invasive and exotic species, climate changes, and development pressures. In these cases, history is surely a guide, but we need to anticipate a new range of outcomes. In these cases, it is valuable to not only look at the history of the specific region in question, but rather to consider histories of surrounding regions as well as those with similar conditions around the world.
ReplyDeleteI’m also currently taking a wetlands ecology course where we read, Discovering the Unknown Landscape: a History of America’s Wetlands. This book outlined the changes in wetland distribution, degradation, policies, and restoration attempts. This was similar to the way we have studied these same changes in forests. It was clear that wetland policy changes were based largely on scientific research and the history of wetlands, which is promising, but too many problems arose when these policies slowed or halted economic gain. Higher value was placed on short-term gains rather than the long-term benefits of wetland protection, despite the knowledge of the clear benefits of having wetlands. No matter how much the public supported policies to preserve wetlands, the rates of wetland conversion remained high. Small gains have been made in both forest management and wetland management based on historical data, but great ideas on paper have consistently been met by the strong arm of economic development. We need to start taking history more seriously and enact policies that are more stringent if we hope to work towards more sustainable forestry practices.
-Amanda
A common thread in Foster’s work and throughout most attempts at and discussions of conservation efforts is the inevitable goal of a desirable outcome. It seems a major flaw in conservation may be in framing a place in time where the composition of flora and fauna in a given space were just right—it’s a contradictory notion, and one we have discussed in length in this class. Foster writes, “Conservation is often driven by a desire to restore natural areas to a previous condition characterized as fitting within the ‘natural range of variability’ or ‘indigenous nature of the system’” (Landres et al. 1999) (86, BioScience). Pinpointing what landscape to epitomize, or to choose as that “natural” state, is the conundrum. As Emily writes, “I wonder why are the processes not natural” in Foster’s description of the Maya forest as having a “deceivingly natural appearance” (78). Just because the new growth is different from its original content? At what point was this forest considered truly natural and why? Who decides? How much energy and money are poured into plans to revert landscapes to their “original” states, and to what ends—will these human-altered landscapes ever really be pristine again?
ReplyDeleteIt’s very easy for value judgments to get in the way of conservation goals—setting priorities should encompass “human activity as a fundamental ecological process” where “lessons from investigations of land-use history [are] applied to landscape conservation and management” as Foster writes in another article on land use history in central New England (96, 1998; http://www.jstor.org/stable/3658707 ). It seems conservation goals will otherwise only be hindered when “the consequences of land use history….are viewed as negative, and an effort is made to remove the legacies of prior human activity” (86, Bioscience). Humans, whether directly (through land use) or indirectly, (i.e., contributions to climate change) will always be a part of nature’s equation in the future, just as we cannot ignore “the glaringly obvious history of human impacts” (4, Forest History) in the past. Deciding to conserve a place in itself is an anthropogenic decision—we’ll always be a part of the landscape; and though Foster put it more nicely, to say otherwise is awfully foolish.
-Stevie
A historical perspective is indispensable for understanding present-day landscapes and making informed management choices moving forward. Time and again this semester we have encountered examples of the confusion and ecological mayhem that ensues when land managers treat ecosystems as somehow standing outside of history. Two particularly memorable cases are the forest islands in Guinea’s Kissidougou savanna region, which scientists incorrectly interpreted as being the sole survivors of rampant deforestation by villagers rather than carefully conserved woodlands that they created in the first place; and the forests of the Blue Mountains of Oregon, where a fundamental misunderstanding of the historical role of fire led to all-out suppression of blazes, with the unwanted effect of transforming millions of acres of pine forest into fir.
ReplyDeleteAs this week’s readings by Foster et al. reveal, ecological understanding of the “unimodal” forests of present-day New England would be one-dimensional using space-for-time methods to determine processes of natural disturbance and succession. However, knowing the region’s land-use history supplements traditional ecological methods, helping to make predictions about future productivity and articulate realistic management and restoration objectives. Virtually every place has undergone ceaseless transformations as a result of climate, fire regimes, soil composition, and the influence of flora and fauna, not least humans. As Foster suggests, a profound insight that history can offer to environmental policymakers and managers is that there is no one “original” version of a given landscape, and that knowledge of the past can yield vital information for what might be possible in the future.
In the course of my research on the Carson National Forest, I heard an amusing and instructive story from an ecologist who knows the forests of northern New Mexico as well as anybody. He described a stand of lodgepole pines that seemed to appear out of nowhere in a section of forest generally known for spruce. It turns out that several decades ago a rather creative Forest Service ranger had been unable to get spruce to regenerate in a clear-cut, and decided to experiment with lodgepole. Sure enough, in that patch of the mountain forest, lodgepole took quite nicely, and the stand of trees endures to the present. Scientists could have puzzled endlessly over the processes underlying this phenomenon, but without the historical backstory, the picture would have been incomplete.
-John
I believe it was Heraclitus, a 500 BC Greek philosopher who stated, “ the only constant is change”… This quote I believe encapsulated what I took from Foster’s articles regarding ecological histories, and the lessons and challenges faced when dealing with conservation of forests. I was amazed at the extent of both ignorance and arrogance that consumed scientists early on in the two LTER sites discussed; the Harvard forest of New England and the Luquillo Forest of Puerto Rico. Although funding issues played a secondary motive for ignoring human influence into their research proposals, I believe it was human arrogance that initially and primarily overlooked the historical influence of human cultures on the establishment of forest growth.
ReplyDeleteIn saying that, it should be acknowledged the beneficial intervention of many conservational organizations, wildness societies and national park services that, “…routinely support and apply such integrated research to provide background in their efforts to understand and manage landscapes, habitats, and species.” However I can’t help but see this as a passive form of human arrogance again. So often we have read this year of mans’ desire to manage and control, to shape to his desire this landscape we live amongst and yet the common theme shining back at us has been the raw power of nature’s way of bringing about change for its own propagation. To even suggest that we should aim to return nature to its original state is in some faculties ridiculous. “The larger message was that there was no ‘original’ landscape…”
As Foster said, the ecological system of our forests is both “transient and ephemeral”; it is constantly changing and we need to accommodate accordingly. One cannot plan with rigid management, nor do I believe a regional generalised system is sufficient if our goal is solely to control and dominate the forests, and nature as a whole. But we are making progress in the right direction, and it is encouraging to see that, “we can develop a deeper appreciation for the importance of cultural and natural history in our current and future landscapes.”
I found the articles for this week to be very interesting. Issues of the “correct” history or managing for what a site used to look like at a certain point in time has often intrigued me. As we look back in history to understand the current landscape of an area, we uncover increased complexity at every corner. Nothing is every clear cut (no pun intended ha) and the result of a single action. Foster mentions in the New England article the historic decline of hemlock and beech and how focusing on one factor really misses the true history. Not only was the Little Ice Age a cause, factors such as the loss of Native American land management and the rapid influx of Europeans and their ways. This is a story that is repeated across the world and results in changes that amount to more than the sum of the causative factors.
ReplyDeleteI worked over the summer doing some prairie restoration , and we discussed some of these ideas out in the field. The area we worked in historically had been part of the floodplain of a river that had been used by Native Americans. The fields were eventually ditched by early farmers, the prairies plowed under, and the old burr oaks cut down. Some of the land was never touched, and much more has undergone restoration back to prairie and savanna over the last decade or two. Undoubtedly, this was an ever changing landscape. Periodic flooding of the river and fire seem like minor disturbances once you look at the glacial heritage of Wisconsin. Then look at geologic history going further back, and it is apparent that as Foster puts it “The story is complex, thwarting simple remedies. “ Furthermore, the influence of Native Americans, early farmers, and changing water systems show the impact of people on the landscape. Currently, issues with invasive and exotic plant life, as well as either over abundant or severely declining animal species demonstrates how “change is rapid and ongoing.” The extreme pace is put into context when you think of the landscape change that has occurred in the last two centuries compared to that of millions of years prior.
Cory
I wanted to add on to the topic that Stevie brought up and how she raised the questions,At what point was this forest considered truly natural and why? Who decides? I though this was interesting to think about because this topic seems to be brought up a lot but at the same time completely ignored. The readings really put another perspective on conservation and how our impact is really overlooked/ Constantly I kept running into sentences that were reiterating emphasis on how human development in such areas as the Harvard Forest are not just pre-mature but sometimes ignored completely. In the first couple pages of Foster’s Conservation Lessons the picture as to what is more important is pretty evident. “The upshot – both sides proposed to study modern nature while largely ignoring people and history -- and both were funded” (5).
ReplyDeleteUpon hearing this, I wasn’t surprised but I was a bit disappointed. Of course people are always trying to bend the ways of truth, but to what extent do you burry the truth so far along the lines of conservation and just worry about small minute details when clearly the mass majority of ecologists know that human impact is such a huge part in the landscapes history.
In the reading it emphasized how much of these forests have been touched previous by the work of our hands and how we need to pay attention to this. “Today 65-95% is forested and, consequently each forest has a legacy of former use as either a woodlot, pasture or plowed field. These contrasting histories exert a strong influence on modern forest composition” (5). Ever since I was a little kid I have built amazing memories surrounding forests and one memory that came to my mind was one in which my twin and I built a huge tree fort in the forest near our house. We would each day bring something of the material world ie from our house to make this fort aesthetically pleasing for fourth graders.
Once it was completed we not only had a masterpiece but attributed to the legacy of that forest. On small very small level a couple kids really took something natural and made an natural habitat but left remanence of unnatural material. To what extent do we contribute to the overall forest legacy? And how can we as individuals learn from landscape history and protect the forests while not overlooking their the human history. We need to be prudent managers that provide proper supervision of rivers, forests, and other natural resources in order to preserve and protect them. We do this by not taking the easy way out but confronting our history and moving forward with determination and belief that individually we can help.
One phrase that really struck me in Foster's Forest History Today article was this: "there was a tendency among most scientists to assume… that decades as a forest preserve had healed any prior human impacts." A similar thing happens in one of his photo captions--"Although New England's extensive forest appears natural, much of it is relatively recent and is controlled in structure and composition by its history of past land use." Foster goes on to argue that human activity is an inextricable part of forest histories and that we need to learn to integrate cultural landscapes into forest history, but the judgment implied in some of the language he uses still connotes all those cultural standards we've been talking about--humans are apart from nature, human impacts on the forest are unnatural in a way that other impacts are not.
ReplyDeleteTo me this is a signal of some major trouble with trying to manage modern forests. How effective can the integration of cultural forest history into the scientific understanding of forest history be if the words people use to describe it undermine that integration at every turn? I had to re-word the previous sentence three times to mitigate my judgmental language, and my personal investment in this issue is quite low compared to the forest planners and scientists who will actually be making these decisions—I imagine it will be (or is) a lot harder for them.
I think Alev's question--what is natural, and who decides--is going to be really important in the future of forest planning. Because natural in its denotative sense doesn't actually mean good--smallpox, arsenic, and dying in childbirth are all natural things for humans, but no one puts up a fuss about mitigating them. For forests we have the opposite problem: something that is natural in its literal sense (humans affect forests) is not natural in its connotative sense, but to maintain forests we assess culturally as "natural" we have to acknowledge that the historical processes and management required are probably not going to be natural by that same definition.
--Erin
I was very surprised, like Jo, to learn how much history has been ignored when looking at land management and restoration. It seems to me that looking at a site’s history would be a natural step when trying to study or restore it. I found it particularly interesting when Foster talked about the sites in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Hugo went through. Even though everything looked like it was regenerating differently because of the hurricane, it was actually previous land use that dictated the current growth.
ReplyDeleteIn the other article, Foster talks about the forests of the Northeast. He thinks that is should be no problem to be able to accommodate all three main uses of the forest: wildland preservation, cultural restoration, and intensive natural resource use. This may be possible, but it would take a lot of management and working together to make it happen. One way would be to establish several Biosphere reserves with corridors attaching them to one another. That way wildland preservation would be at the center and wild animals would be able to move between the different cores to keep populations healthy. Cultural restoration would be the next ring because it would be less destructive than intensive resource use and still provide a semi-natural state. Resource extraction could be on the edges because it would not have as great an affect on the wildland in the center, but still allow for managed use and protections of other more fragile places where those resources might have come from.
Having said that this might work for New England, it certainly would not work for Southern Wisconsin. We have far too much agricultural and to little forests to be able to make the Biosphere program work. Yes, we have small areas with forests, but Wisconsin’s natural habitat is forever changed by agriculture and cannot even begin to be restored to a “natural” state unless agriculture is reduced.
-previous comment by Mallory
ReplyDeleteWhen considering ecological or forest restoration, it is vital to know the history of that forest or landscape – we know this now – so it is eye-opening to read about a time before history was considered and the transition to the realization of its importance. In The Importance of Land-Use Legacies to Ecology and Conservation, the seven contributing authors point out that, “site history is embedded in the structure and function of all ecosystems.” However, at the end of the article they discovered that, “the reintroduction of historically natural processes does not necessarily restore historic ecosystem conditions.” From all of this, I gather that it is important to understand ecosystem history when planning for the future, but it is not necessarily possible to regain a historical ecosystem.
ReplyDeleteLike Emily, these two articles made me think back to the beginning of the semester when we read Eaarth, by Bill McKibben. McKibben argued that the planet we know and love is already irreversibly changed. So, how then can we fight for restoration to any historical ecosystem? I take McKibben’s side on this issue; I do not believe we will ever get back what has been lost through the course of human history. However, I do believe that knowing the history is important for planning for the future. We still have a future to fight for and knowing what changed an ecosystem in the past can only help us through the future of land use planning. Whether the Earth is changed or not, there is still much to be learned from history that will assist us in our quest to brighten the landscape of tomorrow.
-Hanna
History shows that humans and nature and constantly interacting with one another and shaping one another. One is not completely separate from the other. Most of the conservation and environmental policy that I have had experience with has the goal of restoring or preserving the ‘natural’, the ‘wild’, or the ‘original’ landscape. Considering the historical context of the land however, using this language stops making sense. I have many of the same questions as others in class – what does ecological restoration mean now? How do you decide what landscape should look like, or what is worth saving? Who decides? As Emily mentioned, thinking back to “Eaarth”, should we start accepting that the world is fundamentally changing, and that we need to start working within these new parameters instead of putting a lit of energy and resources in keeping an environment that way we think it ‘used to be’ or the way ‘it should be’.
ReplyDeleteI am interested to see how conservation goals change in the coming years. I do think it will be important to include human populations and human needs in this planning. For example, in terms of new directions for conservation, Foster discusses the interesting opportunities for community based forestry to both manage woodlands and to reconnect suburban population with the land.
Maybe we need to start imagining and creating a conservation system that includes people, depolarizing cultural and natural landscapes.
Molly Evjen
Like a couple other people have stated, I was really surprised how much history has been ignored by land management people. The further into school I get, it constantly surprises me to how little interdisciplinary work is done. I wonder what needs to change in our academic systems to encourage that type of work more often.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Emily that it is very confusing to think about what the goal for forest managers and ecologists should be. It seems very wasteful to continuously fight to “restore” lands when the end goal is probably just restoring it to another human altered landscape. Also like Emily, as an outsider to the field I can get lost in all the failures of scientists to recognize that no forested landscape is untouched by humans. It makes me wonder what they should be doing. What are we capable of doing to forests to productively “manage” them? Sometimes I think that the job forest managers should be doing is making sure nobody comes in and clear cuts an entire forest.
Over the last few weeks I have also been stuck on the question of who gets to decide which condition landscapes are going to be “restored” to. I thought about this question the entire afternoon after our class where Professor Langston asked the class what we thought should happen to the woods by the Lakeshore Path. I was stunned and angry at some of the answers. I still think it is absurd to spend the money and time converting it back to oak savannah when most people who use the area probably have no idea it once was oak savannah. The comment that these people’s opinion should not count because they are uneducated about the situation was disgustingly arrogant to me and made me think about the group of people who get to constantly decide what our landscapes around us look like.
I was especially frustrated reading Foster’s article about the Puerto Rican research team knowing that they were ignoring the most relevant issues of the community because they needed to get funded. It’s incredibly irritating to know that money is going to research that the scientists themselves know is worthless, but they do it because they can get funding for it.
The last comment was from Sam Reuter, 4/26/11
ReplyDeleteI had the opportunity to work on a project in Glacier NP looking at American Pika presence and distribution throughout the park. Multiple studies broke-out across the west looking at the American Pika because of an earlier study that utilized historical and archeological records of Pikas in the Great Basin and reexamined these sites through 1994-1999 and found widespread extirpation from pervious locations where Pika’s were present in the past (especially low elevation sites). Pika physiology is closely tied to the ambient air temperature and through changes in climate has expanded and constricted its range. However extirpations in the last 80 years or so has produced enough concern for the USFWS to review the Pika’s status for listing under the endangered species act citing habitat loss due to climate change as the primary concern. Last year however the USFWS decided to deny listing based on not enough data and the fact there are large population sources in places such as Glacier NP. There is still quite an interest in Pikas as a possible sentinel for climate change. Historical records do play an important part in today’s conservation but as Foster points out there are still many more applications for historical records to provide new insight for many landscapes and to expand the way researchers look at a landscape. As the class as talked about for most of the semester and foster brings up in both articles, the question is where in history is the bench mark for conservation or restoration? As for the Pika when North America was colder because of glaciation they ranged into lower elevation well out of the mountains and into the foothills of the Rockies and now the ideal elevation seems to be around 7000ft in areas of Montana and even higher farther south where temperatures are warmer. The threat of climate change could continue to push them up the mountains until there is no place left to go. In order for history to inform I think it is important to have specific goals for a project and highlight functions or characteristics of a landscape that are desirable. There are no easy answers in conservation or the examination of large-scale (both in area and time) ecosystems and just because we don’t have complete understanding does not mean that action should not be taken to conserve or restore our natural places.
ReplyDelete-matt
One of the comments made in class really gave me food for thought: A lot of the ideas of "natural" and how our environment "should" be relates to what we've discussed all throughout the semester: The idea that so many humans have a sense of separation and difference from the rest of the species and ecosystems and environmental relationships in the world. That thought process is what we base so many of our actions on, from buying a new car or weed-whacking. I agree with the statement made in class, but I tried to take a different perspective to the issue.
ReplyDeleteI certainly think that humans have a serious contribution to and control over our environment, but we tend to ignore the importance of understanding the interactions between plants, between animals, or between plants and animals (rather than just human-plant, human-animal, human-ocean, human-atmosphere, etc.) in order to better the planet. So many environmental threats/issues have been on the move recently, and I think that in terms of using historical evidence/information to rejuvenate and maintain our forests, we should consider not just the human context/relationship with the forest but what will also be the best plant-plant/plant-animal/animal-animal/etc. relationships. I'm sure that this already plays a role in forest conservation, but I just was trying to wrap my head around the complexity of applying the right "type" or "time" of forest history to the future.
I agree with the authors that knowing a landscape’s history is incredibly important in deciding out how to manage it. So many things can affect and alter a landscape and many of these are human impacts such as: deforestation, agriculture, introduction of exotic species and then these anothropogenic changes can have further impacts when they change hydrology, cause erosion, or change succession. It is important to know what has changed the landscape or else you are going in blind trying to manage it.
ReplyDeleteI also think in this day and age it is really hard to decide on a management goal. So many different people have different ideas on how the land should be and what they want to get out of it. I agree with Amanda that economic motivations have to be taken into account, because economic pressure can lead to a management strategy that is at odds with scientific and historic data. I also agree with Stevie that picking a time to restore the landscape to is a contradictory notion. Before the settlement of Europeans, Native Americans were altering the landscape, and before Native Americans change the landscape there were still natural processes of change. So the question becomes what arbitrary point in history do we try and restore the landscape to? Many of the management goals of the past was to restore the land back to its pre-settlement state, however is that a possible or practical goal with the implications of global warming? Landscape and forest management are incredibly complex fields and it’s hard to know what effects our management will have. Although it seems a little crude today, I think a lot of it still has to be done by trial and error. However taking all that we know from history and science into account their can hopefully be better outcomes than in the past.